from the Permaculture Community

design process… is the core of permaculture, and it’s been a bit of a mystery, a black box… I think there’s a lot of lessons that can be learned from the previous decades of design practice to make permaculture stronger

I’m really fascinated by the stuff that Dan Palmer is doing at the moment about permaculture and Christopher Alexander’s stuff… he has a website called making permaculture stronger …which I’d really recommend listeners to have a look at. … It’s very interesting stuff – I love Christopher Alexander’s work and it was brilliant to see someone take the time to try and piece the two together

I think Alexander’s concept is much closer to how permaculturists actually design, by starting with something that is already a whole and then differentiating and integrating additional factors into it. The issue is mostly that our language has not caught up to our practice. Thanks, Dan, for the inspiration. I always enjoy revising my thinking to more accurately bring theory and practice into better congruency.

I really applaud Dave (Hursthouse) and especially Dan Palmer for initiating this and holding up the mirror and saying ‘hey guys, look at yourselves. Look at what you’re saying. Look at what you’re teaching. Look at what you’re doing. Is that really the best you can do?’ And so some of us older ones in the beginning were a little bit confronted by it, but once we embraced the process, it’s been really exciting, and I think that it will make permaculture stronger